Barack Obama Elected President!

[UCLAN]

CCT ITA with the "spread the wealth" comment. It was truly a foot in mouth moment. But Mc Cain camp couldn't captalize because there is no true leader in his campaign.

Just finished reading Rolling Stone Article "Block the Vote". It is definitely a must read. Donna Brazile's quote that Jim Crow's cousins have not been laid to rest is very true. This scary thing is what is making this election close. It is amazing how this country is legally disenfranchising its citizens. I was a little concerned when I re-registered cause I had moved. I checked on line and found that I was still showing as registered at my previous address. I re-registered on Ca. deadline date, but then received my mail in ballot. I have one child who voted in the primary, but did not show up as being registered for this election. We had her re-register right away.

Robert Kennedy who co authored "Block the Vote", was on Rachel Maddow. He was saying that you should vote early and vote in person. In the Rolling Stone article there is a link to "no voter left behind" a group founded by kennedy to "steal back your vote". Now those of us who post here are politically savvy and very aware. I knowt hat we encouraging our family and friends to vote, no matter who they support. We cannot have our right to vote hijacked.

Well, I am on election overdose. The closer the day gets, the more nervous I become (I was physically ill after 2000). I would like you all to know that this board has been informative and enjoyable. (Even all the arguments) However, I have stayed too long at the fair. I will look in daily to see if you post anything new, but work is really hectic now (too many ieps).

Thanks for the many stimulating posts.

[milwaukiechick]

Actually the State of Oregon is entirely vote by mail, and has been for several years. I have already received and submitted my ballot, and so have many other people I know. While I agree that it does take the fun out of being at the polls on election day, it is so much easier and there are no long lines to wait in come election day.

[Greg's GL]

I can understand why someone would think the race is close, cct. As long as it's not as close as 2000, I will be happy. I don't want to go through another election like that one ever again!

UCLAN...I think a lot of us are getting a bit burned out. This election season has been extremely long and the everyday mud-slinging (on both sides) tends to get a bit old. I will be happy once the election is over and Mr. Obama can get to the job of fixing GWB's screw-ups.

Wow! Thanks for the info, milwaukiechick. I had no idea that vote by mail is so wide-spread. Is this primarily a west coast phenomenon? The closest we have in FL would be absentee ballots, which even local people request (especially seniors) so they don't have to be someone physically to vote. I can understand the attraction of voting by mail. But y'all think of me on Nov 4th, hanging out at the polls, probably in a long line, and hopefully cooler FL weather on that day!

[Greg's GL]

Here's another Republican calling liberals "anti-American". Jeez. Have they all been drinking the same Kool-Aid or what?!?!

I debated whether or not to post this because of all the negativity surrounding the election. For the life of me, I can't understand this kind of hatred for the opposition nor disregard for wildlife that lead someone to do this.

Dead bear with Obama sign

<sigh>

[cct]

Yes, yes, yes, GL! I've been telling you for a long time, the Republicans have an infrastructure that is unparalleled by the Democrats. They have many "think tanks" where briefs go out on what buzzwords to use and how exactly to engage in argument.

(Boy, that sounded paranoid didn't it?)

[cct]

UClan, are you a teacher? (IEPs)

[Jess]

McCain's campaign has been awful IMO.

[Wales2004]

I listen to a newsradio station in the mornings that broadcasts CBS News at the top of the hour. They generally play clips of whatever McCain is doing and then mention Obama. I heard two of their broadcasts this morning and in the first one they played McCain calling Obama dumb for "getting involved in the World Series" because this is serious news. In the other broadcast, they played part of McCain's new commercial knocking Obama's plan to spread the wealth.

What I think their main goal is to associate Obama with welfare and I'm surprised they have rolled out an ad with their plumber working and paying taxes while the lazy liberals are partying off his taxes. I don't think they're putting much of a dent in their exotic, Muslim, terrorist loving, socialist, communist, most liberal senator celebrity. If they had a positive slant to their attacks they'd be doing better but to constantly say what's wrong about your opponent without offering some real positives about yourself isn't good strategy.

The internet has put a real dent in their tactics as well since a lot of what they say gets debunked rather quickly and people don't seem to care as much about the mud slinging when more pressing things are going on.

[Darcy]

McCain campaign paid Republican operative accused of voter fraud

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/worl...icle4992730.ece

John McCain paid $175,000 of campaign money to a Republican operative accused of massive voter registration fraud in several states, it has emerged.

As the McCain camp attempts to tie Barack Obama to claims of registration irregularities by the activist group ACORN, campaign finance records detailing the payment to the firm of Nathan Sproul, investigated several times for fraud, threatens to derail that argument.

The documents show that a joint committee of the McCain-Palin campaign, the Republican National Committee and the California Republican Party, made the payment to Lincoln Strategy, of which Mr Sproul is the managing partner, for the purposes of “voter registration”.

Mr Sproul has been investigated on numerous occasions for preventing Democrats from voting, destroying registration forms and leading efforts to get Ralph Nader on ballots to leach the Democratic vote.

In October last year, the House Judiciary Committee wrote to the Attorney General requesting answers regarding a number of allegations against Mr Sproul’s firm, then known as Sproul and Associates. It referred to evidence that ahead of the 2004 national elections, the firm trained staff only to register Republican voters and destroyed any other registration cards, citing affidavits from former staff members and investigations by television news programmes.

One former worker testified that “fooling people was key to the job” and that “canvassers were told to act as if they were non-partisan, to hide that they were working for the RNC, especially if approached by the media,” according to the committee’s letter. It also cited reports from public libraries across the country that the firm had asked to set up voter registration tables claiming it was working on behalf of the non-partisan group America Votes, though in fact no such link existed.

Such activities "clearly suppress votes and violate the law”, wrote John Conyers, the Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee. The letter suggested that the Judiciary Department had failed to take sufficient action on the allegations because of the politicisation of the department under the then-attorney general, John Ashcroft.

The career of Mr Sproul, a former leader of the Arizona Republican Party, is littered with accusations of foul play. In Minnesota in 2004, his firm was accused of sacking workers who submitted Democratic registration forms, while other canvassers were allegedly paid bonuses for registering Bush voters. There were similar charges in Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Oregon and Nevada.

That year, Mr Sproul’s firm was paid $8,359,161 by the Republican Party, according to a 2005 article in the Baltimore Chronicle, which claimed that this was far more than what had been reported to the Federal Elections Commission.

Mr McCain and his running mate Sarah Palin have been linking allegations of registration fraud by ACORN, the community group, to the Obama campaign.

ACORN has been accused of registering non-existent voters during its nationwide drive, with reports of cartoon characters such as Donald Duck and Mickey Mouse being signed up. The organisation insisted that these are isolated incidents carried out by a handful of workers who have since been dismissed.

However, the Republican nominee insists that the group is involved in fraudulent activities, noting that Mr Obama, before leaving the legal profession to enter politics, was once part of a team which defended the organisation. At last week’s debate, he said that ACORN was “perpetrating one of the greatest frauds in voter history”, a claim which the Obama campaign says represents political smear.

The revelation of Mr Sproul’s involvement with the McCain campaign – he has also donated $30,000 to the ticket and received at least another $37,000 directly from the RNC – could undermine his case. "It should certainly take away from McCain's argument," Bob Grossfeld, an Arizona political consultant who has watched Mr Sproul's career closely, told the Huffington Post. "Without knowing anything of what is going on with ACORN, there is a clear history with Mr Sproul either going over the line or sure as hell kicking dirt on it, and doing it for profit and usually fairly substantive profit."

In May this year, both ACORN and Mr Sproul were discussed at a hearing of the House subcommittee on commercial and administrative law. One Republican member, Congressman Chris Cannon, concluded: "The difference between ACORN and Sproul is that ACORN doesn't throw away or change registration documents after they have been filled out."

[Wales2004]

I was surprised that the CBS News radio broadcast included the RNC's $150,000 shopping spree at Nieman Marcus and Saks for Palin and her kids. They say the clothes will be donated to charity after the election but they might as well let them keep what they like since it's really not going to change anyone's impression.

[Roman]

But, on the flip side, there have also been Democrats who have said some pretty stupid things as well. Not that stupid, but, Murtha calling western PA. "Racist", what Biden said about Obama being tested (which he will be, it just came out bad), and that stupid joke John Kerry made were ill timed.

[miche]

Vote Purging/Voter suppression

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21134540/vp/27159891#27313887

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rRfJtnfQDgg

[miche]

Where the GOP could get dirty

From Ohio to Florida to Montana, here's where Republicans may be using voter suppression tactics to tilt the presidential election.

http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2008/10/...pression_guide/

[miche]

The real scandal: McCain, GOP and voter suppression

By BOB HERBERT

SYNDICATED COLUMNIST

It never ends. The Republican Party never gets tired of spraying its poison across the American political landscape.

So there was a Republican congresswoman from Minnesota, Michele Bachmann, telling Chris Matthews on MSNBC that the press should start investigating members of the House and Senate to determine which ones are "pro-America or anti-America."

Can a rancid congressional committee be far behind? Leave it to a right-wing Republican to long for those sunny, bygone days of political witch-hunting.

Bachmann's demented desire ("I would love to see an expose like that") is of a piece with the GOP's unrelenting effort to demonize its opponents, to characterize them as beyond the pale, different from ordinary patriotic Americans -- and not just different, but dangerous, and even evil.

But the party is not content to stop there. Even better than demonizing opponents is the more powerful and direct act of taking the vote away from their opponents' supporters. The Republican Party has made strenuous efforts in recent years to prevent Democrats from voting, and to prevent their votes from being properly counted once they've been cast.

Which brings me to the phony ACORN scandal.

John McCain, who placed his principles in a blind trust once the presidential race heated up, warned the country during the presidential debate last week that ACORN, which has been registering people to vote by the hundreds of thousands, was "on the verge of maybe perpetrating one of the greatest frauds in voter history."

It turns out that a tiny percentage of these new registrations are bogus, with some of them carrying ludicrous names like Mickey Mouse. Republicans have tried to turn this into a mighty oak of a scandal, with McCain thundering at the debate that it "may be destroying the fabric of democracy."

Please. The Times put the matter in perspective when it said in an editorial that ACORN needs to be more careful with some aspects of its voter-registration process. It needs to do a better job selecting canvassers, among other things.

"But," the editorial added, "for all of the McCain campaign's manufactured fury about vote theft (and similar claims from the Republican Party over the years) there is virtually no evidence -- anywhere in the country, going back many elections -- of people showing up at the polls and voting when they are not entitled to."

Two important points need to be made here. First, the reckless attempt by McCain, Sarah Palin and others to fan this into a major scandal has made ACORN the target of vandals and a wave of hate calls and e-mail. ACORN staff members have been threatened and sickening, murderous comments have been made about supporters of Barack Obama. (Obama had nothing to do with ACORN's voter-registration drives.)

Second, when it comes to voting, the real threat to democracy is the nonstop campaign by the GOP and its supporters to disenfranchise American citizens who have every right to cast a ballot. We saw this in 2000. We saw it in 2004. And we're seeing it again now.

In Montana, the Republican Party challenged the registrations of thousands of legitimate voters based on change-of-address information available from the Post Office. These specious challenges were made -- surprise, surprise -- in Democratic districts. Answering the challenges would have been a wholly unnecessary hardship for the voters, many of whom were students or members of the armed forces.

In the face of widespread public criticism (even the Republic lieutenant governor weighed in), the party backed off.

That sort of thing is widespread. In one politically crucial state after another -- in Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin, you name it -- the GOP has unleashed foot soldiers whose insidious mission is to make the voting process as difficult as possible -- or, better yet, impossible -- for citizens who are believed to favor Democrats.

For McCain to flip reality on its head and point to an overwhelmingly legitimate voter-registration effort as a "threat to the fabric of democracy" is a breathtaking exercise in absurdity.

Miles Rapoport, a former Connecticut secretary of state who is president of Demos, a public policy group, remarked on the irony of elected Republican officials deliberately attempting to thwart voting. Some years ago, he said, he "and all the other secretaries of state" would bemoan the lack of interest in voting, especially among the young and the poor.

Now, he said, with the explosion of voter registration and the heightened interest in the presidential campaign, you'd think officials "would welcome that, and encourage it, and even celebrate it." Instead, he said, in so many cases, GOP officials are "trying to pare down the lists."

Bob Herbert is a columnist with The New York Times. Copyright 2008 New York Times News Service.

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/opinion/3842...rtonline22.html

[cct]

Well, guys, I made up my mind and I did it today:

I VOTED OBAMA!

Feels good. I don't know how many states have this option, but I'd take it up if I were you. If my polling place is any indication, lines will be out doors and around blocks on voting day. I had to wait in a small line (2 people) to early vote so imagine on The Day Of.

Now that is settled, I can work for the campaign all of Election Day.

GOBAMA!